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Maybe the top 15,000 PyPi packages isn't the best way to measure this? Apparently new iOS app submissions jumped by 24% last year: > According to Appfigures E

Maybe the top 15,000 PyPi packages isn't the best way to measure this? Apparently new iOS app submissions jumped by 24% last year: > According to Appfigures Explorer, Apple's App Store saw 557K new app submissions in 2025, a whopping 24% increase from 2024, and the first meaningful increase since 2016's all-time high of 1M apps. The chart shows stagnant new iOS app submissions until AI. Here's a month by month bar chart from 2019 to Feb 2026: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1020964/apple-app-store-app-releases-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1020964/apple-app-store-... Also, if you hang out in places with borderline technical people, they might do things like vibe-code a waybar app and proudly post it to r/omarchy which was the first time they ever installed linux in their life. Though I'd be super surprised if average activity didn't pick up big on Github in general. And if it hasn't, it's only because we overestimate how fast people develop new workflows. Just by going by my own increase in software output and the projects I've taken on over the last couple months. Finally, December 2025 (Opus 4.5 and that new Codex one) was a big inflection point where AI was suddenly good enough to do all sorts of things for me without hand-holding.

pipnonsense 7mo ago
i was curious, but I need a statista account to see it
- hombre_fatal 7mo ago
  Heh, I got a solid five seconds with the chart until the paywall popped up.
  - klibertp 7mo ago
    But there's no labels on the X axis - and removing the popover with dev tools shows a chart that doesn't really support what OP says. So we might be looking at some sample chart instead of a real one.
  - robot-wrangler 7mo ago
    > Heh, I got a solid five seconds with the chart until the paywall popped up. Relevant! If the maximalist interpretation of AI capabilities were close to real, and if people tend to point their new super powers at their biggest pain points.. wouldn't it be a big blow for all things advertising / attention economy? "Create a driver or wrapper app that skips all ads on Youtube/Spotify" or "Make a browser plugin that de-emphasizes and unlinks all attention-grabbing references to pay-walled content". If we're supposed to be in awe of how AI can do anything, and we notice repeatedly that nope, it isn't really empowering users yet, then we may need to reconsider the premise.
    - ozozozd 7mo ago
      Agreed. The mind wonders: “we got near-infinite software generation capability, and we are still putting up with Statista paywalls?”
- deaux 7mo ago
  https://cdn.statcdn.com/Statistic/1020000/1020964-blank-754.png https://cdn.statcdn.com/Statistic/1020000/1020964-blank-754....
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - hombre_fatal 7mo ago
    Seems they use old data unless you craft a request with origin/referrer: curl 'https://cdn.statcdn.com/Statistic/1020000/1020964-blank-754.png' \ -H 'Origin: https://www.statista.com' \ -H 'Referer: https://www.statista.com/' \ --output chart.png Assuming it's a real chart, that will give you the image with the uptick in the last year.
- philipphutterer 7mo ago
  https://archive.md/tM9Kg https://archive.md/tM9Kg
contravariant 7mo ago
I can't really think of a polite way to phrase this, but I'm not surprised throwaway mobile apps do benefit, while relatively mature python packages do not. That matches my estimation of how much programming skill you can reasonable extract from the current LLMs. Really the one thing that conclusively has changed is that the 'ask it on stackoverflow' has become 'ask it an LLM'. Around 95% of the stackoverflow questions can be answered by an LLM with access to the documentation, not sure what will happen to the other 5%. I don't think stackoverflow will survive a 20-fold reduction in size, if only because their stance on not allowing repeat questions means that exponential growth was the main thing preventing them from becoming stale.
- hombre_fatal 7mo ago
  > I'm not surprised throwaway mobile apps do benefit, while relatively mature python packages do not. Right. I don't think you even need cynicism or whatever you felt you were having impolite thoughts about: I'd expect the top mature libraries to be the most resistant to AI tool use for various reasons. They already have established processes, they don't accept drive-by PR spam, the developers working on them might be the least likely to be early adopters, and -- perhaps most importantly -- the todo list of those projects might need the most human comms, like directional planning rather than the sort of yolo feature impl you can do in a one-man greenfield. All to further bury signals you might find elsewhere in broader ecosystems.
  - pydry 7mo ago
    I would expect nearly all of these developers to be technologically sophisticated and for most of them to have tried AI asssisted coding and to be unafraid to use it if they thought it brought some benefit.
bigbadfeline 7mo ago
> Apparently new iOS app submissions jumped by 24% last year: The amount of useless slop in the app store doesn't matter. There are no new and useful apps made with AI - apps that contribute to productivity of the economy as whole. The trade and fiscal deficits are both high and growing as is corporate indebtedness - these are the true measures for economic failure and they all agree on it. AI is a debt and energy guzzling endeavor which sucks the capital juice out of the economy in return for meager benefits. I can't think of a reason for the present unjustified AI rush and hype other than war, but any success towards that goal is a total loss for the economy and environment - that's the relation between economics and deadly destruction in a connected world, reality is the proof.
- deaux 7mo ago
  > There are no new and useful apps made with AI - apps that contribute to productivity of the economy as whole. This is flat-earther level. It's like an environmentalist saying that nothing made with fossil fuels contributes to productivity. But they don't say that because they know it's not true. There are so many valid gripes to have with LLMs, pick literally any of them. The idea that a single line of generated code can't possibly be productivity net positive is nonsensical. And if one line can, then so can many lines.
  - thinkharderdev 7mo ago
    > This is flat-earther level Ok, so do you have a counterexample?
    - planb 7mo ago
      Can you give me any new (i.e. released in 2026) app that does something useful? There's just not many good app ideas left after all..
      - croes 7mo ago
        That has some strong "Everything that can be invented has been invented" vibes. If that would be true then all these AIs are useless. Who needs them to built something that already exists?
paulddraper 7mo ago
Yeah, PyPI packages are a strange measurement. These tend to be utilities, and a lot of AI coding either reduces the need for utilities, or uses them but doesn't publish to a package index.
- pydry 7mo ago
  Why would AI increase coding productivity for everything except utilities and libraries? I think it's probably one of the better ways to measure productivity, actually. Software packages are unencumbered by non coding related bottlenecks.
  - paulddraper 7mo ago
    I think it would affect it as well. But libraries exist because software is expensive and therefore should be heavily reused. If software is relatively cheap, there is relatively less need to save and reuse it.

pipnonsense 7mo ago

i was curious, but I need a statista account to see it

hombre_fatal 7mo ago
Heh, I got a solid five seconds with the chart until the paywall popped up.
- klibertp 7mo ago
  But there's no labels on the X axis - and removing the popover with dev tools shows a chart that doesn't really support what OP says. So we might be looking at some sample chart instead of a real one.
- robot-wrangler 7mo ago
  > Heh, I got a solid five seconds with the chart until the paywall popped up. Relevant! If the maximalist interpretation of AI capabilities were close to real, and if people tend to point their new super powers at their biggest pain points.. wouldn't it be a big blow for all things advertising / attention economy? "Create a driver or wrapper app that skips all ads on Youtube/Spotify" or "Make a browser plugin that de-emphasizes and unlinks all attention-grabbing references to pay-walled content". If we're supposed to be in awe of how AI can do anything, and we notice repeatedly that nope, it isn't really empowering users yet, then we may need to reconsider the premise.
  - ozozozd 7mo ago
    Agreed. The mind wonders: “we got near-infinite software generation capability, and we are still putting up with Statista paywalls?”
deaux 7mo ago
https://cdn.statcdn.com/Statistic/1020000/1020964-blank-754.png https://cdn.statcdn.com/Statistic/1020000/1020964-blank-754....
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- hombre_fatal 7mo ago
  Seems they use old data unless you craft a request with origin/referrer: curl 'https://cdn.statcdn.com/Statistic/1020000/1020964-blank-754.png' \ -H 'Origin: https://www.statista.com' \ -H 'Referer: https://www.statista.com/' \ --output chart.png Assuming it's a real chart, that will give you the image with the uptick in the last year.
philipphutterer 7mo ago
https://archive.md/tM9Kg https://archive.md/tM9Kg

contravariant 7mo ago

I can't really think of a polite way to phrase this, but I'm not surprised throwaway mobile apps do benefit, while relatively mature python packages do not. That matches my estimation of how much programming skill you can reasonable extract from the current LLMs. Really the one thing that conclusively has changed is that the 'ask it on stackoverflow' has become 'ask it an LLM'. Around 95% of the stackoverflow questions can be answered by an LLM with access to the documentation, not sure what will happen to the other 5%. I don't think stackoverflow will survive a 20-fold reduction in size, if only because their stance on not allowing repeat questions means that exponential growth was the main thing preventing them from becoming stale.

hombre_fatal 7mo ago
> I'm not surprised throwaway mobile apps do benefit, while relatively mature python packages do not. Right. I don't think you even need cynicism or whatever you felt you were having impolite thoughts about: I'd expect the top mature libraries to be the most resistant to AI tool use for various reasons. They already have established processes, they don't accept drive-by PR spam, the developers working on them might be the least likely to be early adopters, and -- perhaps most importantly -- the todo list of those projects might need the most human comms, like directional planning rather than the sort of yolo feature impl you can do in a one-man greenfield. All to further bury signals you might find elsewhere in broader ecosystems.
- pydry 7mo ago
  I would expect nearly all of these developers to be technologically sophisticated and for most of them to have tried AI asssisted coding and to be unafraid to use it if they thought it brought some benefit.

bigbadfeline 7mo ago

> Apparently new iOS app submissions jumped by 24% last year: The amount of useless slop in the app store doesn't matter. There are no new and useful apps made with AI - apps that contribute to productivity of the economy as whole. The trade and fiscal deficits are both high and growing as is corporate indebtedness - these are the true measures for economic failure and they all agree on it. AI is a debt and energy guzzling endeavor which sucks the capital juice out of the economy in return for meager benefits. I can't think of a reason for the present unjustified AI rush and hype other than war, but any success towards that goal is a total loss for the economy and environment - that's the relation between economics and deadly destruction in a connected world, reality is the proof.

deaux 7mo ago
> There are no new and useful apps made with AI - apps that contribute to productivity of the economy as whole. This is flat-earther level. It's like an environmentalist saying that nothing made with fossil fuels contributes to productivity. But they don't say that because they know it's not true. There are so many valid gripes to have with LLMs, pick literally any of them. The idea that a single line of generated code can't possibly be productivity net positive is nonsensical. And if one line can, then so can many lines.
- thinkharderdev 7mo ago
  > This is flat-earther level Ok, so do you have a counterexample?
  - planb 7mo ago
    Can you give me any new (i.e. released in 2026) app that does something useful? There's just not many good app ideas left after all..
    - croes 7mo ago
      That has some strong "Everything that can be invented has been invented" vibes. If that would be true then all these AIs are useless. Who needs them to built something that already exists?

paulddraper 7mo ago

Yeah, PyPI packages are a strange measurement. These tend to be utilities, and a lot of AI coding either reduces the need for utilities, or uses them but doesn't publish to a package index.

pydry 7mo ago
Why would AI increase coding productivity for everything except utilities and libraries? I think it's probably one of the better ways to measure productivity, actually. Software packages are unencumbered by non coding related bottlenecks.
- paulddraper 7mo ago
  I think it would affect it as well. But libraries exist because software is expensive and therefore should be heavily reused. If software is relatively cheap, there is relatively less need to save and reuse it.